PART 2
SO. A woman security guard noticed us turning around in circles and was able to get us tickets from a machine, which wouldn't work for me but worked for her. The train was to come at 7:30. It was 5:30. I went up to the surface again to try to find a farmacia for my rash. I found one right away, and the woman spoke English and was pretty nice. I was bowled over and practically kissed her. I was so grateful. She gave me pills and a lotion, which helped immensely. While we waited for the train to come, we sat limply, unable to believe our bad luck and the coldness of almost every single person we had asked for help. We also pondered how we were going to fare in Monistrol. There was a woman, in her 50s, calmly sweeping up cigarettes around the platform, and she suddenly came over to us. Her right eye was very pale blue, fake, and messed up. She had a look of concern on her face. She asked me if we were going to Monistrol, and then pointed to a girl reading a book behind us. "She's going to Monistrol. You keep an eye on her and she'll show you the way." The girl looked back at us -- dark hair with highlights in it, alert brown eyes, business clothes, glasses, very pretty, maybe 25, strong-looking face -- and smiled. We gawked at both women, then I thanked them profusely. It was a surreal time. A man wandered over to the side of the tracks, half balding, with glasses, short, who carried a large wooden frame in the crook of his arm and ate strawberry ice cream slowly, just standing there, until he finished and left.
When the train came, it made this horrible, shrill, piercing squeak as the driver put on the brakes. We covered our ears. A woman's voice came over the intercom, murmuring in Catalan about its arrival. Nathan had a funny look on his face and was deep in thought the whole time to Monistrol. More about that in a bit. The ride to Monistrol was horribly depressing. Graffiti, construction, factory buildings, crumbling buildings, strange dying plants with little shacks constructed out of mud and metal and wood cropping up out of them.
We saw the first crazy rock formations of Monistrol when we were about 35 minutes outside Barcelona. This got us excited. We rounded a corner and suddenly we were at the train station. It was tiny, white, with not a soul in sight. The girl looked over at us and said, "This is it", excitedly, and we hurried off the train and followed her -- down a steep street, across a bridge, up another street, and then I asked her if she would tell us where to find the hostel. She said that she would just lead us right to it because she lived near it. We talked a little, in Spanish and in English, about how she grew up in Monistrol and worked in Barcelona. We followed her up and down some of the steepest, narrowest streets I've ever been on, and it was hard work. I was wearing my wool sweater and carrying a massive backpack on my back. She wasn't out of breath at all and let us rest before continuing at one point. We reached the hostel, thanked her over and over, and she walked away with her pointy white shoes smacking the pavement, leaving us at the door, which was actually at the back of the hostel. We rang the bell over and over, but no one was there! I was so exhausted and practically suggested we sleep outside that night. I walked around to the other side of the building, and ran into a really cool Spanish couple with a sleeping toddler who were in the same boat we were. They had a villager with them who was on the phone with the hostel owner, and we all stuck together. They were so awesome. We talked about our travels and our families and Monistrol while we waited and I translated for Nathan. They were some of the only Spanish hippie-type people I saw in Spain, and they had the same kind of personality and vibe to them as Nathan and I. They had their car with them and decided to go stay somewhere else, but the hostel owner arrived and let us in. The hostel was pretty spiffy -- shiny white floors, potted plants, and curly staircases. Our room had its own bathroom, which was exciting after having to share one at both places in Amsterdam, and we threw our miserably heavy backpacks down and changed into cooler clothes. Nathan pointed out that we were probably really dehydrated, so we each drank about 1.5 liters of water before falling to sleep. I woke up several times scared to death, shaking, unable to stop crying. It was the same thing in the morning. I remembered what I had gotten us into, remembered where we were and what lay ahead of us, and stayed in bed crying until Nathan woke up, calmed me down a little, and left to go get some food from the restaurant that was below the hostel. He came back dismayed and looking like he wanted to give up. The food was really gross, and cold, and we were both starving, and lost, and culture shocked...We both lay around clasped in each other's arms for half the day. Nathan said that he wanted to go home, that he hated it there. He had tears in his eyes. I agreed whole-heartedly. We tried to find a phone to call home, but couldn't, so we walked to the station to catch a train up to the top of the mountain. We came to Monistrol to experience the cool rocks and monasteries, so we were going to do it. The train driver was a feisty, perky girl who was 22 and had been driving trains since she was 20. We talked about the different animals that lived in this part of Spain, about school and the horrible transportation system in Barcelona. She laughed, wrinkling her nose, and said, "Whaaat? It's confusing?" We were the only ones going up the mountain at that point, so we had the whole train to ourselves. What astonishing views! On a clear day they would have been even better. Up at the top there were lots of tourists milling around the monastery, and cheap souvenir shops, and really horrible food. I would have enjoyed the coolness of the place so much more had I not been in the state I was.
Food, we quickly discovered, was awful in Spain, and deathly unhealthy. Picture the average supermarket's selection of pastries, Twinkies, donuts, and such, then picture 8 times that amount. Bad, huh? You bet. At every supermarket counter there were people stocking up, purchasing cases of donuts, croissants, deep-fried things, and meat. Lots and lots and lots of meat and pastries. Everywhere I saw parents feeding their children donuts and Coke and horrid tubes of bright red meat. The ingredients list confirmed my fears: sugar, bleached, enriched white flour, and a slew of artificial flavorings. The people in Spain didn't look healthy at all, many of them with coughs, canes, all kinds of walkers and arm extenders, and looked 10 years older than they should have. Cigarettes were smoked everywhere, too, with no sign of anti-smoking campaigns or those special gums and patches. I once asked a pharmaceuticalist about them out of curiosity and he had no idea what they were.
Nathan and I lived in cheerios, tuna, and bananas while in Monistrol, and I was constantly hungry.
The weirdest thing happened when we were wandering the streets and petting stray cats. Nathan told me that several weeks earlier, he had had a dream that resembled the Barcelona train/metro station exactly, from the screech of the train's brakes to the woman's voice over the speakers. He said that in the dream he was under water, below a metal grate, and the water got colder and colder. The woman's voice said, "Nothing happens here -- ever". As we were walking along, some writing on a building caught my eye. It was in large white letters, and written very neatly. It said, "There is nothing here. Nothing happens here. Never". Well, I just about fell over backwards. We sat down on the tiny sidewalk across the street (when I say sidewalk, I mean a cobbled strip of raised street 16 inches wide, and across the street is like the average living room width) and stared at it and talked, while a barefoot little girl hummed absent-mindedly and played with a stick in the street, watching us the whole time.
In fact, people often watched us in Monistrol. We would cross the plaza, where kids bounced on trampolines and a merry-go-round of sorts spun brightly, and the mountain loomed in the background with its monasteries hanging off the cliffs and its convent sitting somberly -- in which its women take a vow of silence -- and heads would turn. Old people would lean against their balcony railings and just watch. It never crossed their minds that they could come down and help us find our way or show us around -- that wasn't going to happen. They just liked observing. I noticed that a lot of little kids would gawk at Nathan's shoes -- I guess because they had never seen a gnarly outdoor shoe like that before.
And we remained completely culture shocked out of our socks. And unhappy. And utterly lost. We decided that it would be best to go home, that this trip was too much for us, that we were in far over our heads. We stumbled upon a pay phone, and after spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to make international calls, I got through to home. I poured my heart out to my mom, who listened patiently but worriedly. I was dead serious about coming home. I didn't care how much money I had to spend or that people would label me as a loser -- our being in Spain was wrong. I had a horrible feeling about it. Mum said she would call Continental Airlines and see what she could do. Relieved, and ashamed, I hung up and sat outside on a bench with Nathan. When I called back an hour later, and after Nathan had called his parents, Mum said that Phil (Nathan's dad) had called her right after Nathan and he had finished talking and that he had talked a lot of sense into her. Phil is a Boy Scout leader and has experienced many a scout terribly homesick, crying in their tent and begging for their parents. The ones who do go home are always angry that they did so later on; the ones who push through their misery end up having a blast. He said that we should go on to Alicante, our next stop, and see how we felt. Nathan agreed -- he was getting over his misery faster than I was. I mumbled an OK, and agreed to keep going.
On the train back to Barcelona, we happened to meet two people from Wisconsin, Caroline and Ken, who were in their 50s and were at the end of a long trip through Spain. We talked all the way to Barcelona. They laughed and laughed when we said that we had found hell on earth, which was the Barcelona metro system, and took our unhappiness in stride. They infused so much humor, optimism, and strength in us and navigated the station with us and got us on the right train to Alicante. We hugged them both before parting, and waved until they were out of sight. I can't believe our incredible luck. They were such surrogate parents, even if only for an hour and a half.
I panicked at the first sight of Alicante -- construction absolutely everywhere, graffiti, desert, and no sign of people. Alicante is 5 1/2 hours south of Barcelona, by the way. Our hotel said that RENFE (Spain's national railway system) stopped right in front of it, but obviously, it didn't. I didn't know how we were supposed to get to Hotel Castilla, and it looked horribly ugly. Uglier than Barcelona. I felt tears coming and threw my backpack over my shoulders. I couldn't even look at Nathan. I was so ashamed what I had gotten s into. He followed silently, seeing that that I was struggling with my emotions. However, as we came through the doors of the train station out into the open, my thoughts were whirled around. Palm trees! Squeaky-clean streets! Posh restaurants! Well-dressed people! Flowers! Hey, and taxis! We got into one right away and were whisked off, up the coast to the hotel, which was much farther away from the train station that I imagined, and not actually in Alicante -- it was in some posh setting called San Juan Beach. Full of British tourists and people looking to stay out all night and get tan during the day, but we didn't care -- it was safe, and easy, and our hotel was truly fancy. A huge room, with a balcony, gigantic, soft beds, plush chairs, etc -- and only 25 euros a night! I was so relieved. It was bland and cultureless, and exactly like southern California, but I didn't care. The staff spoke English and even directed us to where the street markets were.
We ended up staying for four nights, not wanting to stray from this paradise of safety. Our next destination was Granada, and I hoped to death that it would be good. And it was.
We arrived on a Sunday. Along the way we met Erika, a 20-year old from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Everyone stared at her because she was so bright and funky and probably looked like an alien to them. Her hair was in short blonde dreadlocks. She had pointy black glass earrings in her ears, many of them, a bright red top over a neon green shirt, hemp necklaces, very baggy grey capri pants, sandals, and didn't speak a lick of Spanish, the poor thing. I first talked to her in the bathroom at one of the bus's many stops after she had been throwing up. I offered her some of my travel remedies, and after that she, Nathan, and I stuck together. I had explicit directions to Funky Backpackers Hostel, including how to get there from the bus station (joy!), so we made it. It was really nice to have a third opinion on things. Nathan and I were in total awe of Erika. She was in Asia for 3 1/2 months, where she met some South Africans with whom she really hit it off, then flew to London, got into Spain somehow, and was spending some time in Granada before she went to Portugal, then back to London before flying to Africa to work there for a year with the South Africans she met. And she's 20! And this was her first time away from home, overseas, you name it!
We wound our way up a tangle of streets and reached a building that said, "Wow, that's FUNKY" on the side, and we knew we had arrived. The owner, Carmen, was young, and totally relaxed, and had cats crawling all over room, and immediately showed us around after we checked in. (Erika decided to stay two nights). It was love at first sight. The building had winding staircases, was very narrow, and very old. From different rooms I heard people laughing, and some music. We got up to the roof terrace and totally lost it when I saw the huge Catholic cathedral with birds soaring around it and the sunset behind it, and the Alhambra peeking out over the hill behind us. I was too excited to do anything, so I just jumped around and Carmen laughed and hugged me, and went on to explain that there were regular dinners on the terrace with flamenco and Moroccan music and free tea and coffee all the time and...I was floating. This was truly heaven. I knew at that moment that the pain and suffering of Barcelona/Monistrol and the stagnant boredom of Alicante were worth going through to reach Granada. Everywhere there were white-washed houses, cobblestone streets, old, old places, palm trees, the Sierra Nevada mountains, pink flowers, the smell of food and brightly colored things hanging from shops.
It was that night that we met Paolo, a dark, long-haired New Zealander, around 35 or 40, doing dishes and making macaroni. He smiled and spoke to me but I had no idea what language he was speaking in because of his incredibly thick accent. I stood there dumbly smiling back, prepared to answer in German or somesuch when a petite chestnut-haired woman in her early 40s burst out of the room next to ours and started laughing about something with the man -- with a Texas accent. Right away I realized what a fun time we were going to have here and that we would meet all kinds of people. Her name was Mary, and she had quit her job to travel Spain for 8 weeks before heading to Florida to live with her daughter. She was completely willing to try anything, and she and Paolo had met in Granada and were both staying in the 4-bed room next to us. Nathan, Paolo, Mary, and I all sat around the kitchen talking about politics, where we were from, the ozone layer (Paolo said that sometimes in New Zealand you get really burned just being outside for 15 minutes!), what we thought of Spain, and where we were coming from; Mary, from Cordoba; us, from Amsterdam; Paolo, from Peru. He was doing some kind of nifty flight deal where he'd catch whatever flight was available. Then Mary decided it was time to uncork the wine, and poured us all a big glass. Nathan and I grinned at each other -- oh, boy, that was a lot of wine, and we weren't used to it! I sipped mine while I listened to Paolo and Mary talk about Granada. Mary was looking at me and saying something about Texas when I noticed that the colors in the room started looking deep and intense, and Mary sort of looked like she was glowing. I had to go lay down, so I excused myself while Nathan, Paolo, and Mary laughed and started talking about going out for tapas -- that famous Andalucian tradition of small plates of food washed down with sherry or wine. I was totally out on the bed for what seemed like an hour, but Nathan said it was only 10 minutes. Mary wanted to go out and get tapas with us, but she mysteriously disappeared, so Nathan and I went out, me jerkily taking the stairs one at a time, while he laughed and teased me about getting drunk on a thimble of wine. We went and get falafel from a tiny Arab store, and gelato.
The next we hit the Arab markets. They were narrow, dark, cramped, bright, and glittering. Arabic pop music pulsed out of the doorways of shops and the merchants stood or sat around talking with each other, eyeing me as I went by, their dark eyes curious and flirtatious. It made me blush, and I felt naked in my tank top, skirt, and sandals, but I stuck close to Nathan, who was bargaining with a merchant over a table and rugs. He had to haul them back to the hostel, so I browsed a shop belonging to a woman, the only female merchant I ever saw there, actually. I stepped outside to look at some earrings on display outside the adjacent shop and found myself talking to the merchant, who was a tall, clean-looking dude from Egypt and who spoke some English. The earrings were on sale, he informed me, and I bought two pairs. He asked where I was from. California. My name. Caitlin. The guy's name who I was with. My boyfriend, Nathan. He told me I was very nice, and smiled very, very charmingly. His name was Hassan Nour. 36 years old.
Nathan came back and we went around to the other side of the market. Through the gaps in between shops I could see the merchant watching at me, and all his friends started calling out to me and flirting. My face was pink and I couldn't stop laughing. Bad idea. That just made them flirt more. Nathan went to buy some water and said he would be right back. Reluctantly, I went back to the man's shop to buy more earrings, as I was doing a lot of birthday shopping. I realize now what a naive thing to do that was. He was very excited to see me and gave me his business card. He showed me some earrings for 1 euro, and left the shop. I was looking through them when he came back and started making comments about my figure and my hair, and right as started to feel that I was too far back in his shop for my own good and too alone in there and that he was getting too close, he came up behind me and started feeling me up all over, wrapping his arms around me and kissing the side of my face. I was totally surprised, dropped the earrings, smacked his hand away, and quickly got out of there saying something like, "Are you crazy?!"
I bumped into Nathan as I rushed out of the market and fled its barrage of male eyes laughing and winking and staring, and calmly told him that we should go to lunch. Over a fabulous array of salad, spinach crepes, and carrot-apple juice at a Moroccan restaurant we found, I told him, and he totally lost his appetite (which I regret very much. That food was crazy awesome!). We debated the various possibilities: hang him by the toes, force-feed him lima beans, curse at him in Arabic...Etc. Of course, a talking-to wouldn't do any good, and to beat him up would be a bad idea since he had al his friends there. I couldn't believe his nerve. If he was so daring to do that in public, what would he have done if I had, as he has suggested, come to "visit him" in his house above his shop? Yee gads.
Granada was perfectly awesome and satisfying and gorgeous in every other way, though. We hiked up to La Alhambra -- a very steep climb, made even more discouraging by the fact that the middle-aged woman in high heels smoking a cigarette in front of us was beating us up the hill -- and got lots of good views and good photos and everything. What more can you say about possibly the most sensual building in Europe with its fantastic setting, looking over the Albaicin, the old Arab quarter, the Spanish plains outside the city, and the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains towering in the background?
The cathedral in Granada was really something else, too. It was gimungous inside -- 20 soaring white pillars, a gorgeous ceiling, hardcore Christian paintings of Jesus and Mary and all that heavy stuff, and the tombs of Isabel and Ferdinand (well, supposedly; there's doubt that those actually are their remains in there; but I'm not one for history, so take this information with a grain of pepper). There was a tour inside the cathedral, and their guide sang something in Latin, his voice echoing all over the place. It sounded so incredibly cool that I knew I had to try it for myself. After everyone had left at just about 8:00, which is when it closes, I hid behind a pillar and sang "Phantom of the Opera" songs. My voice sounded amazing -- crystal clear and powerful. I truly wish that I had a cathedral at home to go sing in.
We went to a lot of churches in Granada, which was pretty heavy for me because I had had a dream about death one night and it was weighing on me the whole time, with all these thoughts of life and afterlife and religion and existence and things. Nathan remarked, "What if all of this" -- paintings, candles, worship, sculptures, pillars, etc -- "was just created because of our fear of death?"
On our last night we hiked through the Albaicin and up a really steep path to the gypsy caves. We had a great view of the Alhambra, the Albaicin, the cathedral, churches, mountains, sunset, plains...There was a woman sitting on an old couch on top of the hill, next to a bunch of ferocious looking cactuses, who smiled at us every couple of seconds and seemed like she was really happy to see us there. There were some kids playing soccer outside the caves whose ball kept rolling down the hill. The caves had cardboard on them for floors and laundry hanging outside on a piece of fence. It was surreal up there...The couch, the soccer, the caves, the cactuses, the view.
We continued to meet cool travelers. I sauntered into our kitchen (I call it ours because we shared it with only one other room, although other people tended to congregate there) one night and met three 18-year olds from Washington D.C who had come to Spain from Israel, where their graduating class had spent two months in. All three happened to have been raised with Spanish and were all totally fluent. They were loud and geeky and cool and we hung out quite a lot.
The day we left Granada, I was sad. I still miss it, in fact. It’s just a powerful place, beautiful, exotic, and timeless.
When the train came, it made this horrible, shrill, piercing squeak as the driver put on the brakes. We covered our ears. A woman's voice came over the intercom, murmuring in Catalan about its arrival. Nathan had a funny look on his face and was deep in thought the whole time to Monistrol. More about that in a bit. The ride to Monistrol was horribly depressing. Graffiti, construction, factory buildings, crumbling buildings, strange dying plants with little shacks constructed out of mud and metal and wood cropping up out of them.
We saw the first crazy rock formations of Monistrol when we were about 35 minutes outside Barcelona. This got us excited. We rounded a corner and suddenly we were at the train station. It was tiny, white, with not a soul in sight. The girl looked over at us and said, "This is it", excitedly, and we hurried off the train and followed her -- down a steep street, across a bridge, up another street, and then I asked her if she would tell us where to find the hostel. She said that she would just lead us right to it because she lived near it. We talked a little, in Spanish and in English, about how she grew up in Monistrol and worked in Barcelona. We followed her up and down some of the steepest, narrowest streets I've ever been on, and it was hard work. I was wearing my wool sweater and carrying a massive backpack on my back. She wasn't out of breath at all and let us rest before continuing at one point. We reached the hostel, thanked her over and over, and she walked away with her pointy white shoes smacking the pavement, leaving us at the door, which was actually at the back of the hostel. We rang the bell over and over, but no one was there! I was so exhausted and practically suggested we sleep outside that night. I walked around to the other side of the building, and ran into a really cool Spanish couple with a sleeping toddler who were in the same boat we were. They had a villager with them who was on the phone with the hostel owner, and we all stuck together. They were so awesome. We talked about our travels and our families and Monistrol while we waited and I translated for Nathan. They were some of the only Spanish hippie-type people I saw in Spain, and they had the same kind of personality and vibe to them as Nathan and I. They had their car with them and decided to go stay somewhere else, but the hostel owner arrived and let us in. The hostel was pretty spiffy -- shiny white floors, potted plants, and curly staircases. Our room had its own bathroom, which was exciting after having to share one at both places in Amsterdam, and we threw our miserably heavy backpacks down and changed into cooler clothes. Nathan pointed out that we were probably really dehydrated, so we each drank about 1.5 liters of water before falling to sleep. I woke up several times scared to death, shaking, unable to stop crying. It was the same thing in the morning. I remembered what I had gotten us into, remembered where we were and what lay ahead of us, and stayed in bed crying until Nathan woke up, calmed me down a little, and left to go get some food from the restaurant that was below the hostel. He came back dismayed and looking like he wanted to give up. The food was really gross, and cold, and we were both starving, and lost, and culture shocked...We both lay around clasped in each other's arms for half the day. Nathan said that he wanted to go home, that he hated it there. He had tears in his eyes. I agreed whole-heartedly. We tried to find a phone to call home, but couldn't, so we walked to the station to catch a train up to the top of the mountain. We came to Monistrol to experience the cool rocks and monasteries, so we were going to do it. The train driver was a feisty, perky girl who was 22 and had been driving trains since she was 20. We talked about the different animals that lived in this part of Spain, about school and the horrible transportation system in Barcelona. She laughed, wrinkling her nose, and said, "Whaaat? It's confusing?" We were the only ones going up the mountain at that point, so we had the whole train to ourselves. What astonishing views! On a clear day they would have been even better. Up at the top there were lots of tourists milling around the monastery, and cheap souvenir shops, and really horrible food. I would have enjoyed the coolness of the place so much more had I not been in the state I was.
Food, we quickly discovered, was awful in Spain, and deathly unhealthy. Picture the average supermarket's selection of pastries, Twinkies, donuts, and such, then picture 8 times that amount. Bad, huh? You bet. At every supermarket counter there were people stocking up, purchasing cases of donuts, croissants, deep-fried things, and meat. Lots and lots and lots of meat and pastries. Everywhere I saw parents feeding their children donuts and Coke and horrid tubes of bright red meat. The ingredients list confirmed my fears: sugar, bleached, enriched white flour, and a slew of artificial flavorings. The people in Spain didn't look healthy at all, many of them with coughs, canes, all kinds of walkers and arm extenders, and looked 10 years older than they should have. Cigarettes were smoked everywhere, too, with no sign of anti-smoking campaigns or those special gums and patches. I once asked a pharmaceuticalist about them out of curiosity and he had no idea what they were.
Nathan and I lived in cheerios, tuna, and bananas while in Monistrol, and I was constantly hungry.
The weirdest thing happened when we were wandering the streets and petting stray cats. Nathan told me that several weeks earlier, he had had a dream that resembled the Barcelona train/metro station exactly, from the screech of the train's brakes to the woman's voice over the speakers. He said that in the dream he was under water, below a metal grate, and the water got colder and colder. The woman's voice said, "Nothing happens here -- ever". As we were walking along, some writing on a building caught my eye. It was in large white letters, and written very neatly. It said, "There is nothing here. Nothing happens here. Never". Well, I just about fell over backwards. We sat down on the tiny sidewalk across the street (when I say sidewalk, I mean a cobbled strip of raised street 16 inches wide, and across the street is like the average living room width) and stared at it and talked, while a barefoot little girl hummed absent-mindedly and played with a stick in the street, watching us the whole time.
In fact, people often watched us in Monistrol. We would cross the plaza, where kids bounced on trampolines and a merry-go-round of sorts spun brightly, and the mountain loomed in the background with its monasteries hanging off the cliffs and its convent sitting somberly -- in which its women take a vow of silence -- and heads would turn. Old people would lean against their balcony railings and just watch. It never crossed their minds that they could come down and help us find our way or show us around -- that wasn't going to happen. They just liked observing. I noticed that a lot of little kids would gawk at Nathan's shoes -- I guess because they had never seen a gnarly outdoor shoe like that before.
And we remained completely culture shocked out of our socks. And unhappy. And utterly lost. We decided that it would be best to go home, that this trip was too much for us, that we were in far over our heads. We stumbled upon a pay phone, and after spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to make international calls, I got through to home. I poured my heart out to my mom, who listened patiently but worriedly. I was dead serious about coming home. I didn't care how much money I had to spend or that people would label me as a loser -- our being in Spain was wrong. I had a horrible feeling about it. Mum said she would call Continental Airlines and see what she could do. Relieved, and ashamed, I hung up and sat outside on a bench with Nathan. When I called back an hour later, and after Nathan had called his parents, Mum said that Phil (Nathan's dad) had called her right after Nathan and he had finished talking and that he had talked a lot of sense into her. Phil is a Boy Scout leader and has experienced many a scout terribly homesick, crying in their tent and begging for their parents. The ones who do go home are always angry that they did so later on; the ones who push through their misery end up having a blast. He said that we should go on to Alicante, our next stop, and see how we felt. Nathan agreed -- he was getting over his misery faster than I was. I mumbled an OK, and agreed to keep going.
On the train back to Barcelona, we happened to meet two people from Wisconsin, Caroline and Ken, who were in their 50s and were at the end of a long trip through Spain. We talked all the way to Barcelona. They laughed and laughed when we said that we had found hell on earth, which was the Barcelona metro system, and took our unhappiness in stride. They infused so much humor, optimism, and strength in us and navigated the station with us and got us on the right train to Alicante. We hugged them both before parting, and waved until they were out of sight. I can't believe our incredible luck. They were such surrogate parents, even if only for an hour and a half.
I panicked at the first sight of Alicante -- construction absolutely everywhere, graffiti, desert, and no sign of people. Alicante is 5 1/2 hours south of Barcelona, by the way. Our hotel said that RENFE (Spain's national railway system) stopped right in front of it, but obviously, it didn't. I didn't know how we were supposed to get to Hotel Castilla, and it looked horribly ugly. Uglier than Barcelona. I felt tears coming and threw my backpack over my shoulders. I couldn't even look at Nathan. I was so ashamed what I had gotten s into. He followed silently, seeing that that I was struggling with my emotions. However, as we came through the doors of the train station out into the open, my thoughts were whirled around. Palm trees! Squeaky-clean streets! Posh restaurants! Well-dressed people! Flowers! Hey, and taxis! We got into one right away and were whisked off, up the coast to the hotel, which was much farther away from the train station that I imagined, and not actually in Alicante -- it was in some posh setting called San Juan Beach. Full of British tourists and people looking to stay out all night and get tan during the day, but we didn't care -- it was safe, and easy, and our hotel was truly fancy. A huge room, with a balcony, gigantic, soft beds, plush chairs, etc -- and only 25 euros a night! I was so relieved. It was bland and cultureless, and exactly like southern California, but I didn't care. The staff spoke English and even directed us to where the street markets were.
We ended up staying for four nights, not wanting to stray from this paradise of safety. Our next destination was Granada, and I hoped to death that it would be good. And it was.
We arrived on a Sunday. Along the way we met Erika, a 20-year old from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Everyone stared at her because she was so bright and funky and probably looked like an alien to them. Her hair was in short blonde dreadlocks. She had pointy black glass earrings in her ears, many of them, a bright red top over a neon green shirt, hemp necklaces, very baggy grey capri pants, sandals, and didn't speak a lick of Spanish, the poor thing. I first talked to her in the bathroom at one of the bus's many stops after she had been throwing up. I offered her some of my travel remedies, and after that she, Nathan, and I stuck together. I had explicit directions to Funky Backpackers Hostel, including how to get there from the bus station (joy!), so we made it. It was really nice to have a third opinion on things. Nathan and I were in total awe of Erika. She was in Asia for 3 1/2 months, where she met some South Africans with whom she really hit it off, then flew to London, got into Spain somehow, and was spending some time in Granada before she went to Portugal, then back to London before flying to Africa to work there for a year with the South Africans she met. And she's 20! And this was her first time away from home, overseas, you name it!
We wound our way up a tangle of streets and reached a building that said, "Wow, that's FUNKY" on the side, and we knew we had arrived. The owner, Carmen, was young, and totally relaxed, and had cats crawling all over room, and immediately showed us around after we checked in. (Erika decided to stay two nights). It was love at first sight. The building had winding staircases, was very narrow, and very old. From different rooms I heard people laughing, and some music. We got up to the roof terrace and totally lost it when I saw the huge Catholic cathedral with birds soaring around it and the sunset behind it, and the Alhambra peeking out over the hill behind us. I was too excited to do anything, so I just jumped around and Carmen laughed and hugged me, and went on to explain that there were regular dinners on the terrace with flamenco and Moroccan music and free tea and coffee all the time and...I was floating. This was truly heaven. I knew at that moment that the pain and suffering of Barcelona/Monistrol and the stagnant boredom of Alicante were worth going through to reach Granada. Everywhere there were white-washed houses, cobblestone streets, old, old places, palm trees, the Sierra Nevada mountains, pink flowers, the smell of food and brightly colored things hanging from shops.
It was that night that we met Paolo, a dark, long-haired New Zealander, around 35 or 40, doing dishes and making macaroni. He smiled and spoke to me but I had no idea what language he was speaking in because of his incredibly thick accent. I stood there dumbly smiling back, prepared to answer in German or somesuch when a petite chestnut-haired woman in her early 40s burst out of the room next to ours and started laughing about something with the man -- with a Texas accent. Right away I realized what a fun time we were going to have here and that we would meet all kinds of people. Her name was Mary, and she had quit her job to travel Spain for 8 weeks before heading to Florida to live with her daughter. She was completely willing to try anything, and she and Paolo had met in Granada and were both staying in the 4-bed room next to us. Nathan, Paolo, Mary, and I all sat around the kitchen talking about politics, where we were from, the ozone layer (Paolo said that sometimes in New Zealand you get really burned just being outside for 15 minutes!), what we thought of Spain, and where we were coming from; Mary, from Cordoba; us, from Amsterdam; Paolo, from Peru. He was doing some kind of nifty flight deal where he'd catch whatever flight was available. Then Mary decided it was time to uncork the wine, and poured us all a big glass. Nathan and I grinned at each other -- oh, boy, that was a lot of wine, and we weren't used to it! I sipped mine while I listened to Paolo and Mary talk about Granada. Mary was looking at me and saying something about Texas when I noticed that the colors in the room started looking deep and intense, and Mary sort of looked like she was glowing. I had to go lay down, so I excused myself while Nathan, Paolo, and Mary laughed and started talking about going out for tapas -- that famous Andalucian tradition of small plates of food washed down with sherry or wine. I was totally out on the bed for what seemed like an hour, but Nathan said it was only 10 minutes. Mary wanted to go out and get tapas with us, but she mysteriously disappeared, so Nathan and I went out, me jerkily taking the stairs one at a time, while he laughed and teased me about getting drunk on a thimble of wine. We went and get falafel from a tiny Arab store, and gelato.
The next we hit the Arab markets. They were narrow, dark, cramped, bright, and glittering. Arabic pop music pulsed out of the doorways of shops and the merchants stood or sat around talking with each other, eyeing me as I went by, their dark eyes curious and flirtatious. It made me blush, and I felt naked in my tank top, skirt, and sandals, but I stuck close to Nathan, who was bargaining with a merchant over a table and rugs. He had to haul them back to the hostel, so I browsed a shop belonging to a woman, the only female merchant I ever saw there, actually. I stepped outside to look at some earrings on display outside the adjacent shop and found myself talking to the merchant, who was a tall, clean-looking dude from Egypt and who spoke some English. The earrings were on sale, he informed me, and I bought two pairs. He asked where I was from. California. My name. Caitlin. The guy's name who I was with. My boyfriend, Nathan. He told me I was very nice, and smiled very, very charmingly. His name was Hassan Nour. 36 years old.
Nathan came back and we went around to the other side of the market. Through the gaps in between shops I could see the merchant watching at me, and all his friends started calling out to me and flirting. My face was pink and I couldn't stop laughing. Bad idea. That just made them flirt more. Nathan went to buy some water and said he would be right back. Reluctantly, I went back to the man's shop to buy more earrings, as I was doing a lot of birthday shopping. I realize now what a naive thing to do that was. He was very excited to see me and gave me his business card. He showed me some earrings for 1 euro, and left the shop. I was looking through them when he came back and started making comments about my figure and my hair, and right as started to feel that I was too far back in his shop for my own good and too alone in there and that he was getting too close, he came up behind me and started feeling me up all over, wrapping his arms around me and kissing the side of my face. I was totally surprised, dropped the earrings, smacked his hand away, and quickly got out of there saying something like, "Are you crazy?!"
I bumped into Nathan as I rushed out of the market and fled its barrage of male eyes laughing and winking and staring, and calmly told him that we should go to lunch. Over a fabulous array of salad, spinach crepes, and carrot-apple juice at a Moroccan restaurant we found, I told him, and he totally lost his appetite (which I regret very much. That food was crazy awesome!). We debated the various possibilities: hang him by the toes, force-feed him lima beans, curse at him in Arabic...Etc. Of course, a talking-to wouldn't do any good, and to beat him up would be a bad idea since he had al his friends there. I couldn't believe his nerve. If he was so daring to do that in public, what would he have done if I had, as he has suggested, come to "visit him" in his house above his shop? Yee gads.
Granada was perfectly awesome and satisfying and gorgeous in every other way, though. We hiked up to La Alhambra -- a very steep climb, made even more discouraging by the fact that the middle-aged woman in high heels smoking a cigarette in front of us was beating us up the hill -- and got lots of good views and good photos and everything. What more can you say about possibly the most sensual building in Europe with its fantastic setting, looking over the Albaicin, the old Arab quarter, the Spanish plains outside the city, and the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains towering in the background?
The cathedral in Granada was really something else, too. It was gimungous inside -- 20 soaring white pillars, a gorgeous ceiling, hardcore Christian paintings of Jesus and Mary and all that heavy stuff, and the tombs of Isabel and Ferdinand (well, supposedly; there's doubt that those actually are their remains in there; but I'm not one for history, so take this information with a grain of pepper). There was a tour inside the cathedral, and their guide sang something in Latin, his voice echoing all over the place. It sounded so incredibly cool that I knew I had to try it for myself. After everyone had left at just about 8:00, which is when it closes, I hid behind a pillar and sang "Phantom of the Opera" songs. My voice sounded amazing -- crystal clear and powerful. I truly wish that I had a cathedral at home to go sing in.
We went to a lot of churches in Granada, which was pretty heavy for me because I had had a dream about death one night and it was weighing on me the whole time, with all these thoughts of life and afterlife and religion and existence and things. Nathan remarked, "What if all of this" -- paintings, candles, worship, sculptures, pillars, etc -- "was just created because of our fear of death?"
On our last night we hiked through the Albaicin and up a really steep path to the gypsy caves. We had a great view of the Alhambra, the Albaicin, the cathedral, churches, mountains, sunset, plains...There was a woman sitting on an old couch on top of the hill, next to a bunch of ferocious looking cactuses, who smiled at us every couple of seconds and seemed like she was really happy to see us there. There were some kids playing soccer outside the caves whose ball kept rolling down the hill. The caves had cardboard on them for floors and laundry hanging outside on a piece of fence. It was surreal up there...The couch, the soccer, the caves, the cactuses, the view.
We continued to meet cool travelers. I sauntered into our kitchen (I call it ours because we shared it with only one other room, although other people tended to congregate there) one night and met three 18-year olds from Washington D.C who had come to Spain from Israel, where their graduating class had spent two months in. All three happened to have been raised with Spanish and were all totally fluent. They were loud and geeky and cool and we hung out quite a lot.
The day we left Granada, I was sad. I still miss it, in fact. It’s just a powerful place, beautiful, exotic, and timeless.